I was so glad to to find a restaurant with a large selection of vegetables on the menu after passing so many restaurants where the focus was meat and potatoes.
The food at Phyto was delicious. The vegetables were fresh and lightly cooked.
And the special surprise were the healthy desserts, which consisted of fresh cooked fruit wrapped in a muffin like crust.
And everything was organic without with very little fat.
Right near the Trocadero subway stop is a neighborhood full of Art Nouveau architecture (organic style popular in the late 1800s and early 1900s).
I felt artful when I got back to my hotel so I changed the photograph to a painting.
You'd think you'd have to run the image through just one Photoshop filter, but that's not the case as you'll see below--
First I applied Edit>Transform>Skew to realign the image so it stands up and down (the vertical lines in the image stand 90 degrees from the x axis) instead of at an angle, which is the way it was originally shot. Then I applied the ink outlines filter and watercolors filter.
The picture at that point was too dark so then I adjusted the Levels (Image>Adjustments>Levels) by moving the center and right slider inward.
Last, the image didn't look detailed enough so I applied the Smart Sharpen Filter.
Hello from Paris! This is my second day here. I rode in the subway with my camera (a Sony DHC-H5 Cyber-shot) and caught the train zooming off from a station.
As you may have recalled if you're a faithful reader of my blog, I posted an explanation of the Paris subway system last October.
Hello from Paris. The first thing I noticed since the last time I was here last year is the new Velib bike rental system.
Riders take out a subscription (a fee paid by credit card right at the machine where the bike is). Subscriptions can be purchased by the day (1 euro), week (5 euros) or year (29 euros).
After that, the bike rental is free for the first half hour and a couple more euros for subsequent 30-minute periods.
Bob Hope and Bing Crosby teamed up often-- on radio, on television and in movies. The two made On the Road to Singpore, the first of many "road" movies. There were seven of those from the 1940s to the 60s. The two played show business business men who were also shisters.
The movies were melodramtic and took place in exotic places. The films were successful because of the chemistry between Hope and Crosby.
The image above is a picture of a picture of Hope and Crosby recording a program on the radio. It was taken in a museum in Winslow, AZ.
Rialto, California used to be a big citrus growing area.
You'd think a town like Rialto would be tiny. But it's not. There are 101,000 people living in this place that many have never heard of.
It's the town where I pick up the train to go to Union Station in L.A. and it's almost an hour away from my home in Palm Springs.
The big event there this past weekend was The Rialto Holiday On Ice, which was a fundraising reception to support Lindsay Davis, an ice skater who ranks 7th in National US Junior Figure Skating.
Rialto is located in San Bernardino County and is about 10 miles from the city of San Bernardino.
On Rialto's Web site, you can view streaming video of their city council meetings.
Oh, and Rialto has a big worry. There's perchlorate in the Rialto-Colton Groundwater Basin.
Perchlorate is the primary ingredient of solid rocket propellant, and it's in the tap water of the water supplies in many cities.
Here's what the EPA is doing about it: "EPA is currently undertaking efforts to help the Agency determine if regulation of perchlorate in drinking water would represent a meaningful opportunity for reducing risks to human health."
There's a great article posted on a blog today about creative commons.
Take a look at the little girl in the above picture. Then think about these questions.
1. Who owns the photo? 2. Who can use the photo? 3. Does Blogger (Google) have any interest in this photo? 4. What are the stipulations for use of this photo? 5. What would you have to do to protect the photo from others using it?
These are many questions that come to mind when you post a photo on blogger or on Flickr.
Flickr states: "Respect the copyright of others. This means don't steal photographs that other people have taken and pass them off as your own. (That’s what favorites are for.)"
What this implies is that you're free to link to other's photos but not free to borrow them if without linking back to his/her site/posting. But does this mean you should ask the person who took the photograph if you can use it? I say, absolutely!
Creative Commons sets guidelines for photographers to use with regard to the photos they post on the Internet.
"Creative Commons provides free tools that let authors, scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry. You can use CC to change your copyright terms from 'All Rights Reserved' to 'Some Rights Reserved.'"
In other words they let you change the automatic* stipulation that any photographs you post are all-rights-reserved photos to other stipulations that you can choose from, "like some rights reserved."
*According to templetons.com, "all major nations follow the Berne copyright convention. For example, in the USA, almost everything created privately and originally after April 1, 1989 is copyrighted and protected whether it has a notice or not." This is known as the Berne Copyright Convention.
Moral of the Story: Read the fine print. Don't go posting on a site that lets them have your rights. And don't take others' photographs without asking!
The show at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, "The Art of the American Snapshot, 1888–1978 and the show at Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, "Depth of Field" are two shows the show how photography has evolved since its inception.
Peter Plagens, the writer of the piece states that a "mimetic new medium" was formed in 1839 when a print was made from a negative. In other words he describes photography during that period as realism--real subjects and objects that the lens captures.
He then goes on to talk about the changes in photography that occurred when everyone started taking pictures with their Kodak Instamatic and Brownie cameras.
Last he moves to the postmodern days of Photoshop, image manipulation that's easy and, well...fake.
Basically Plagen's asserts with reservation that photography is an "easy" medium in which to work. You take a picture with your digital camera, and, if you frame it right, you might get posted on the Internet.
I think a point can be made that there is a difference between a photograph and a snapshot. One is planned from finding the right time, place of the shot to adjusting camera settings to framing and shooting. The other is a picture taken casually without much thought.
Plagens focuses on post-processing (using Photoshop) as the beginning of the end of photography.
It would be better to say that photography's last step (using Photoshop) is a small part of what a photographer does and when it is done it's no simple task.
You can catch a train up the coast or inland from the center of Los Angeles at Union Station.
Train travel in the United States is fragmented at best. While we don't have an extensive train network as vast as that of Europe, we do have one that suits the needs of the larger cities.
One doesn't think of Los Angeles as a place where one takes a train, but many people do as routes extend out like a spider from the city's Union Station.
Union Station opened in 1939 when at that time it carried 7000 passengers a day.
Today 26,000 ride the trains to and from the Inland Empire and up and down the coast.
You can catch the Los Angeles Metro to many places around the city, including Hollywood from Union Station.
One of the century’s most innovative and popular designs, Art Deco was a style that spread across the globe in the 1920s and 30s and contained the same forward-looking architectural aspirations of the earlier Art Nouveau period (1890s to 1910s).
As time progressed less became more so that the ornamentation that lined the perimeters of signs disappeared from signs in the 50s and 60s.
Today in San Francisco, many of the Art Deco signs remain. I believe the city has the best collection of these signs in the world.
The South of France is filled with architecture from the 60s and 70s. On a walk from the Old Town in Aix de Provence (town of about 100,000 with architecture from the 5th to the 18th centuries); to the outskirts of the city, there's a weird and wild building, which I like to call the dot building.
It was built in traditional mid-century modern style--long lines of concrete steel, glass, zig-zagging roof lines, outlined in some serious black and white.
The building is home to the Foundation Vasarely. It was designed by Victor Vasarely, who's considered the Father of Op Art.
If you're going the way of Provence, this building should not be missed.
In 1869, King Charles III of Spain sent Father Junipero Serra to build a string of missions in California. By 1823 21 missions had been built. The Spanish friars and Indian tribes helped to build them.
Mission San Francisco deSolano (pictured above) was the last one built.
The Roman Catholic church set up each mission to convert people to Christianity. A convert was called a neophyte.
Russian fur traders shared their supplies and donated bells to Mission San Francisco deSolano in the 19th century.
Today the mission is part of the Sonoma town square. Sonoma is the center of Northern California's wine country.
In Mexico, there was once a little girl who cried because she had no flowers to bring to a nativity scene in her town. An angel came and told her to pick a weed and plant it by the baby Jesus. She did and the small weed turned into a giant poinsettia.
In America the plant got its name from Joel Roberts Poinsett, a South Carolina doctor with an interest in botany who went on to be a U.S. ambassador to Mexico. When he traveled to Mexico, he saw a plant with bright red leaves and had it brought back to the United States.
When he got back to the U.S. he propagated the plant and had it sent out to some of his friends who were nurserymen. They ended up calling the plant a poinsettia, after Poinsett.
A couple of posts ago, I wrote directions for taking a self-portrait.
I didn't include the most obvious way to take a self portrait and that is taking a picture of yourself standing in front of a mirror or in front of some sort of reflective glass.
I didn't post my own self-portrait, either, because I couldn't locate the one I wanted to post.
But, alas, I found it and it's posted above.
Speaking of self-portraits there are two photographers that come to mind: Cindy Sherman and Robert Mapplethorpe.
After the shootings in Nebraska yesterday, perhaps the United States should do what Cambodia has done and put up billboards against violence.
This image was taken a few years ago in Siam Reap, Cambodia.
During the period from 1975-79 1.7 million people died in Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge were responsible for the killings.
Pol Pot led the Khmer Rouge in a campaign against people in urban areas. He moved people from the city to rural areas. Anyone against the regime was killed.
Pol Pot and his followers ended up killing 20 percent of Cambodia's population.
Everyone who’s anyone’s done it-made self-portraits or had had them shot or painted.
Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Henri Matisse, Dali, and Max Ernst all did.
It’s a simple process, really that documents your existence, and even more, it reveals your character, who you are at any given moment. It represents the likeness of a person that can be caught on canvas or in a photograph or sketched on paper, any of which can be scanned and made into digital art.
In 1932 Gilberte Brassai photographed Pablo Picasso and in 1944 Henri Cartier-Bresson photographed Arnold Newman. Portraits entertain though the expressions of the subject. Some portrait artists collect images of the same person over a lifetime, some, like Cindy Sherman, photograph themselves.
As an artist you can choose who you want to create as your subject from the over-50 women of America’s Red Hat Society to young RAP singers or collect those of everyday people.
All you have to do is put your camera in auto or portrait mode and step back a bit from your subject, then zoom in to 80 mm focal length stepping back or forth until the image is clear when you press the shutter half-way down.
You can take your own self-portrait too--
1. Find a place to sit that's relatively clutter free both in front and in back. If you have to move a chair to the place go for it. 2. Check the lighting keep away from places where everything is casting a shadow. 3. Set your camera to portrait mode, look at the view finder and place the camera (use a tripod if you have to or a chair) so that it's pointing in the area where you will sit when it takes your picture. 4. Set the timer to the longest time there is. The timer shows up on your LCD screen as a clock (without a line crossed through it). 5. Place the camera where you want it (should be far enough so you have to zoom to 80mm to get the portrait) and click on the shutter. 6. Quickly move to the place that you found where you will pose for a picture. 7. After the camera takes the picture look at the LCD screen to see if your head and shoulders are comfortably in the frame. If not zoom in or out to where you think you will be in the frame. 8. Set the timer again and click the shutter. 9. Check to see if you're framed well. 10. Repeat steps 6 to 9, this time practicing a pose, say leaning forward in with your arms resting on your knee (a writer's pose).
The history of Los Angeles includes everything from the Gold Rush to modern architecture. A history of LA County can be found here.
One of the best Web sites about Los Angeles architecture is from you-are-here.com. You wouldn't know by the URL that this Web site has a vast array of information from an interactive map of the city to pictures and info on just about every building in the city.
The site lists buildings by the decade in which they were built. For each decade there are dozens of buildings listed.
The Art Deco theaters opened all across the country in the early twentieth century.
This is the Babcock Theater in Billings Montana. Movies are no longer shown there, but it is the place to see boxing.
The site of this theater was purchased by A.L. Babcock in 1889. Before this theater was built, there was an opera house on the property. The opera house burned down in 1906. Babcock went on to build a theater on the site. Fire destroyed the interior of the theater in 1935. It was rebuilt by a Californian right after the fire.
I always love a good photography exhibit, especially if it concerns old photographs from the mid-century (in the image above, please find an image of me in 1978).
I think that just about every other photograph taken of people from that era looks experimental, because it was an experimental time.
In the mid-century people were experimenting not only with sex, drugs and rock-in-roll, but also with fashion from hair to clothing.
Just look at the picture above and you'll see an Afro hairdo on a white person. If you saw that in the 40s, the person wearing it probably would have had to undergo electric shock therapy.
There's a show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City that emphasizes an old photography style, which I think can be referred to as experimental mid-century or photographing in an experimental era, an era when society was in flux. The review in the New York Times refers to this type of photography as the Diane Arbus school (Arbus photographed random subjects during the mid-century).
There are two rooms to the MOMA's exhibit, one in which the photographs of Eadweard Muybridge, Alfred Stieglitz and Clarence White are presented, and another where the photographs of some new artists can be viewed. Much of the old photography is from the early part of the twentieth century.
While the Times dismisses the new photographers as a group who provide nothing fresh, they do point out one whose work is associated with the Arbus school. This work is from Tanyth Berkeley and the image they highlight is "Grace in Window."
I agree with the Times comparison of this artist's work with Diane Arbus. Arbus worked with very real (offbeat) subjects in a very real (odd) world. Berkeley works with similar subjects, but, as I see it, her subjects are less varied and the context in which she presents them less informative.
Arbus used some very interesting backgrounds and framed her subjects from a distance. Berkeley's art is limited in subject matter (mostly women) and there's almost no background as most of her images are close-ups.
The video here I made to help people learn how to use the clone stamp tool in Photoshop.
In the video I use an image of an old sign to illustrate how you use the clone stamp tool.
The main part of the sign's text reads: "Downtowner Motel." This part of the sign was probably constructed in the 1950s. The motel is in Missoula, Montana.
The sign also has a newer plastic addition that says "AAA Approved."
It is this part of the sign I seek to eliminate. I do so so that the image as a whole looks like it was taken in the 50s.
You can't help but meet many Amazon natives when you're traveling through the rain forest.
After arriving in Coca, Ecuador, you can travel many miles by boat and canoe to get to the Napo Wildlife Center. The Napo Wildlife Center is in the Yasunì National Park.
It's great that the Napo Wildlife Center is there as they've preserved over 52,000 acres of rain forest. Much of the rain forest has been under attack by the oil companies who want to drill for oil, thus destroying the land.
In the picture above you see some members of the Quichua indigenous community. When you stay at Napo learn about the families are educated about their daily activities.
The Napo guides also take you on a trip to the parrot lick.
I highly recommend a trip to Napo and a stay at the Napo Wildlife Center. A great description of the Napo Wildlife Center is here.
To learn about some techniques used to photograph wildlife go to this post.
* a year-by-year timeline of the history of photography that's fascinating. * a photo tour of George Eastman's house * Kodak music from the turn-of-the-last-century * biographies of inventors such as Thomas Edison and businessmen such as Henry Strong. * major photographic events such as public reactions to the first Kodak cameras
Here's a mini-timeline I wrote--
PHOTOGRAPHY HISTORY TIMELINE In 1827 camera obscura was invented, a process where by an image took 8 hours to expose.Isacc Newton discovers that white light can be divided into colors. In 1843, the fist advertisement with a photograph was made. In 1888, George Eastman invented film. In 1913, the first 35 mm camera was introduced. In 1935, Kodak introduced Kodachrome.film.In 1941, Kodak introduced negative film.In 1963, Kodak introduced instant color film In 1978, the first point-and-shoot auto focus camera introduced
Basically, the digital camera uses a mirror system first to reflect the light coming through the attached lens to the view finder. After the shutter release button is pressed, the mirror swings upward to reflect the image to the camera's sensor.
Let's give thanks to the people who lived in Mexico 7000 years ago. They developed corn.
What do you think was on the menu when the pilgrims and the Indians had their feast.
Not sweet potatoes, not cranberries, but corn, lots of corn.
In the picture above you see flint corn, better known as Indian corn. I believe this is the most photogenic of the many kinds of corn.
The Close-Up
When you're photographing this year's Thanksgiving dinner, catch some close-ups of the turkey, not only just after it's cooked whole, but also the parts, the dark meant and the white meat.
Catch friend's and relative's faces close-up. Catch the dog close-up.
Come to think of it catch everything you see close-up.
Close-ups reveal texture and expression from the fine lines (come on there's character there) in people's faces to the color of the kernel's of Indian corn.
Flash
When you can, avoid using the flash. Instead of using your flash, use the natural light in the room. You want to catch that ambiance of the celebration.
Making Money from your Thanksgiving Photographs
To make money from your Thanksgiving photos go here.
Animals that aren't moving much are easy to photograph.
I'm going to start this post with a fact--if you're photographing wildlife at a zoo or at a place, say, like the Galapagos, where the animals are not moving much, photographing animals is a cinch.
A good photograph can be had with any camera, point-and-shoot or SLR.
All you have to do is step away a bit from the animal and zoom in on the whole animal or a body part and snap a photo. If you do this with your camera's zoom greater than 100 mm (35 mm equivalent), you'll get a nice blurred background with a clear animal in the foreground (if you didn't shake your camera).
In order to enhance the blur in the background set your camera's f-stop to the lowest it'll go, say, f/4.0 will do (large aperture; lens open wide) in Av (aperture priority mode). I\
If there's little light, like the light you would have on the floor of the Amazon jungle, set your ISO speed to the highest it will go, say, 1600.
In order not to get blur your shutter speed should be no more than the inverse of half the of the focal length you're using on your camera. For example if you're shooting an animal using a focal length of 100 mm, your shutter speed can be no more than 1/50th of a second.
Now if you're photographing fast moving animals, say a monkey in a tree, you'll need a really good lens such as the Canon EF 300/4L. The lens has a good zoom (to 300 mm), image stabilization and is reasonably fast (4L). It's also reasonably priced.
Now, when you're out in the field and you're zooming in on a moving animal, try and move your camera along with it. In that way, you're more likely to get a clearer image.
And if you're photographing an owl in a tree use a tripod with your zoom. You can use flash also, but I don't recommend it because it'll freak out the animal.
This is Fire Station No. 98 in Chicago's Water Tower district. It was built in 1904. All the department stores, Borders, etc... is in this neighborhood as well as a theater or two.
The Galapagos Islands, the land where Charles Darwin roamed, offers an opportunity to mingle with travelers from all around the world while tracing the steps of wildlife not seen anywhere else in the world.
One of the most popular ways to tour the islands is to take a cruise. Since most of the Galapagos Islands are part of a national park (of Ecuador), you have to have a guide to see them. There are a variety of tour packages—many of them, cruises—where guides are provided and that give you the option of visiting many islands in a trip.
My partner and I chose the biggest boat—the Galapagos Explorer II—decidedly the most comfortable (but most crowded) of all the options sailing around the islands. This boat offered a package with all meals and excursions included in one price, and the services provided were similar to those on the big ships that sail to the popular tourist spots around the globe.
After spending a few days in Quito Ecuador, we flew to Guayaquil on Ecuador’s coast to connect to the flight that goes directly to the Galapagos.
We landed at a desolate, barren island flooded with hundreds of tourists meeting the tour guides from the ships. The park staff took our entrance fee, a steep $200 for the both of us. At this point in the trip we had the same feeling you get at the entrance to Sea World, only way more expensive.
Moments later we waited with sleepy sea lions for small lifeboats to take us to the ship. The animals’ whiskers vibrated as they coughed, snorted and sneezed among the stiff breeze.
These would be the first of thousands of sea lions we would observe, step over, sit next to and photograph. I got kind of attached to some of them as they napped on the beaches, wanting to shake their fins and introduce myself. Not to bother though, because “ellos muerden,” the guides would warn.
Upon first inspection, I found the ship to be a bit tattered from wear, but it more than met our needs. Every room on the boat was a suite making the cruising all that more comfortable. The first of our landings took a couple of hours after we set sail.
Chinese Hat Island came into view as we cruised on a calm sea. Inflatable lifeboats took us to a “wet landing”, that is, one where your feet get wet (and sometimes more than that) as you jump off onto the beach.
It was on this island where Darwin’s spirit reined, an island covered with sea birds, sea lions, and big, ugly iguanas. I spent the afternoon peering at the groups of iguanas scattered both on the sand and on top of black boulders. Evidently these creatures came about from natural selection—meaning these are one of the few animals that have adapted to the dry (there’s little rain on the Galapagos) ocean side environment.
Darwin described this scene in his writings: “The black lava rocks on the beach are frequented by large (2-3 ft) most disgusting clumsy lizards.”
I’ll certainly agree, only to add that some of them had large maroon spots that covered more than half their body, and others a crusty rock-like surface that coated their heads. My favorite part of the animal, though, was the spikes that ran up and down its back, so primitive. Most of the iguanas just lied there, but toward the end of our hike one got up and went for a swim. No wonder scientists gave them the name “marine iguana.”
The next day we found ourselves shelping among the rocks on Espanola, an island that hosts the blue-footed boobie. This bird is a must-see of the Galapagos, with its webbed feet a baby blue. It’s a look fashionable either when they are standing on them or when they flip them up as they fly.
As we hobbled among the rocky trail, the guide pointed out a freak, unexplainable occurrence that was going on with the boobie offspring, beautiful animals not yet endowed with feathers, but a white fur coat instead. We found out that they soon will die. For the past few years, most of them have. Seems as if the species lay their eggs from which the young emerge, and then they die off mysteriously not reaching adulthood. Of course after that information was dispensed a chat about global warming occurred.
After the trekking on isolated islands, the boat took us to two Galapagos towns--Puerto Ayora and Puerto Baquerizo Moreno. It was refreshing to see civilization. Animals and flowers that I hadn’t seen on the other islands warranted dozens of stops on a long walk around the town. Also, just about every human I passed offered a smile.
As I traveled with my partner, we found ourselves among a diverse crowd. We met a young couple with a child and an elderly gay couple (must have been in their 90s), both of whom toured with us on the excursions. We spent much time with them discussing many things from the sex life of sea lions (the males are polygamous and dominant) to the food and service on the boat.
The Galapagos lie very close to the equator so that one would not think it would be a late summer respite from our sizzling temperatures. Similar weather conditions that exist on our coasts in summer appear on the islands, offering a cool escape from Palm Springs.
This is the type of place that spurs scientific interest in the natural world. I, for one, tripped up in scientific thought just about the whole time I was there. From natural selection to cool South Pacific ocean currents, a trip to the Galapagos opened my eyes to a wide host of issues, spurring my awareness that might even turn my next vacation another void of city lights.
Chicago's skyline in color before using the Channel Mixer in Photoshop.
Chicago's skyline after using the Channel Mixer in Photoshop.
When there are too few colors in your photo and/or boring colors, switch it to black and white.
How do you do that?
You could just desaturate (Image>Adjustments>Desaturate). But a better way, I think, is to do this:
1. In Photoshop use Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Channel Mixer 2. Click okay in the New Layer dialog box. 3. Click on Monochrome in the Channel Mixer dialog box. 4. Tweak the slider bars till you get good contrast. 5. Use Layer>Flatten Image
See the video below that I made and it'll take you through the process of changing color photographs to black and white.
Usually you want to take a picture using the rule of thirds. This picture is cropped using the rule of thirds.
If you drew a vertical line across every third of this frame, you'd find that the first vertical line would go right through the elephant. I planned it that way. I placed the elephant following the Rule of Thirds.
The Rule of Thirds is a great way to plan your shots. Take for example, a landscape of the countryside just outside your city or town. You'd want to frame the picture so that the bottom two-thirds of your frame would be land and the top third sky. In this case the lines you drew across the frame to divide it into thirds would have been horizontal.
So much for the rule of thirds. Sometimes you can throw it out as in the picture above. If you've got a knock-off-your-socks photograph of a sunset that looks like fire, capture as much as you can in the frame. All the land you'll need is a bit more than an eighth of a frame so viewers will have a land reference with respect to the sky.
So What is Raw Format? Well, for starters it's not an acronym. It means "raw."
Shoot in Raw and you can go back and reset your exposure and other settings just as if you were back out in the field.
Here's what you can tweak in the Raw dialog box after you've uploaded your photos from your camera to your computer. (Best to have Photoshop, if you're going to work in Raw format, cause the program will automatically take your photo and put it in a Raw dialog box so you can manipulate it.)
There's more too. Try clicking on the tabs in the dialog box. The most useful item, I think, is in the Lens tab. You can control the vignetting (that black halo you sometimes get around the frame of your photo).
On the way back from BlogExpo, I stopped in Kelso, CA to photograph some abandoned properties. Noone was around and there was easy access to the property because it was right off the road.
One usually photographs only the outside of such properties, but the real action is in the inside.
What do you think? Have you ever photographed an abandoned building or house?
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